Kristopher Jansma - Why We Came to the City

Mr. Joyce had sent William downtown to pick up a monstrous mural of deboned chickens that his wife had commissioned from an artist named Xeer Sool who was, apparently, very hot just then. And there she’d been! Irene Richmond! In greasy overalls, beautiful as ever, trying to help an angry Austrian sculptor bolt ceiling fan blades together at precise thirty-nine-degree angles. She didn’t look up, but William knew she’d never have recognized him if she had. He had been wallpaper at school. If they made beige wallpaper you couldn’t even tell wasn’t paint. It didn’t matter. He could not get her out of his head. He had actually had dreams about her — always in black and white, as if she were in one of his movies.

Then the following week he’d seen the invitation for the K Gallery Christmas party arrive with Mr. Joyce’s mail. He knew Mrs. Joyce would be in Vail with her husband anyway and wouldn’t be able to go. So, just like the champagne bottle, he’d stolen it. The Dow was in free fall. They were probably going to fire him anyway. Still, it had been a week of hemming and hawing before he’d decided to go as an envoy of Mrs. Joyce’s — merely hoping to catch sight of Irene again. He’d never for a moment imagined he’d speak to her, let alone that she’d be twenty feet away, smiling at him.

For her part, Irene was mainly happy that Sara had someone nice to talk to, since she still had to schmooze for work and George and Jacob could never be pried apart. She knew odds were good that Sara would try to adopt William. Sara was forever picking up strays — after all, she’d once been one of them. Irene did notice that William kept looking over at her. Looking at her and then looking quickly away, that is, as if she were the sun and he might damage his retinas if he stared too long. She waited until he stared again and raised her champagne flute in one hand.

William looked away so fast, he thought he’d pulled a ligament. Or whatever you had in your neck. What would she think of him, leering like that? Oh. Except that now she was mouthing “thank you.” What on earth for? Oh. For the champagne. All right then.

Sara was explaining that George had become an astronomer as he’d always planned. Well, a researcher. Well, a research assistant . But at a quite respected observatory and certainly on his way to gaining faculty status when his research was completed. She was beckoning to George and Jacob so wildly that they finally had to come over. “Jacob was in classics too. You must have been in some of the same classes!” Sara insisted, “That department was the size of a postage stamp. There were only four professors — Douglas, Jones, Khan, and oh! the alcoholic one. Wilfrey!”

“Why do you have the 2003 classics faculty memorized?” Jacob asked.

Sara tapped her right temple. “Like a steel trap.”

Jacob looked at William. “Well, mine’s a hunk of Swiss cheese. I swear I just can’t remember you. Nothing personal.”

Sara knew he was lying. Jacob did remember him, and it damn well was personal that he was pretending otherwise. Why would he do such a thing? Jacob could be a jerk when he wanted to be, and he nearly always wanted to be. Over the years she’d tried to introduce several new friends to the group, but they never lasted.

This time would be different though. William was blushing every time he caught sight of Irene. They were perfect for each other. At least a lot more perfect than the awful people that Irene had crashed in and out of bed with lately. Sara mentally reviewed the full 2008 batting order: Connie the bitter divorcée; Sasha the former figure skater with the “mild” coke habit; “Cowboy” Lenny who had turned out to be “Cult Member” Lenny; and Anne, a Lower East Side chef with a mean streak longer than the wait at her restaurant. But now there was something softening in Irene’s stance when she turned toward William.

“I wish I’d stuck with classics,” William confessed. “I ended up at Yale for my MBA.”

“You make it sound like you tripped and fell into it,” Jacob said.

Sara flicked his ear. “Ignore Jacob. He hates anyone who went to Yale.”

“Why? Did he go to — Sorry, did you go to Harvard?”

“No,” Sara said wryly, “Yale rejected him, and his ego never recovered. You’d think Harold Bloom personally came over and strangled his puppy.”

Jacob was pointedly ignoring the both of them now. He and George were whispering to themselves about something or other, though not as quietly as they thought they were. William stood alone, pretending to look out the window at the falling snow, trying not to appear to be eavesdropping on the boys’ conversation — even though they were standing right next to him and not even bothering to be quiet now that Sara had walked away.

“ Here ,” Jacob was saying, “in front of everybody? You’re the living worst.”

“It’s our anniversary,” George explained, so cheerily it seemed forced.

“It is beyond lame of you to keep celebrating all these anniversaries. Eight years since you first made out! Eight months since you took your first trip together! Five years and six months since you first bumped uglies! Are you both in middle school? It’s revolting.”

“Can you be quiet?”

Jacob shrugged. “We may never know.”

“She’d want me to do it here,” George tried again, “with our closest friends.”

Jacob snorted. “What’ll you do if she says no?”

“She’s not going to say no.”

“I forgot you can predict the future. You should look at my stock portfolio sometime.”

“You don’t have a stock portfolio. You barely have a couch.”

“I’ve still got half my bar mitzvah money in Nintendo stocks, and don’t insult the blue foldout! We bought that couch together, remember? And I’ve bumped more uglies on it than—”

William decided it probably wasn’t a good time to offer to take a look at Jacob’s portfolio, or to tell him that his own picks were still doing better than expected, despite the Dow being down about five thousand points since October. Actually he hoped to talk to Jacob about poetry — William had done his thesis on The Iliad— but the guy showed zero interest, and so William decided it was probably just as well that he take off. He moved away toward a waiter with a tray of duck meatballs smothered in bulgogi sauce. After he grabbed one and ate it, he realized the leftover toothpick was the perfect excuse to wander toward the kitchen, where Irene and Sara were whispering about something else. They didn’t notice him as he dumped the toothpick and began looking for a napkin to wipe his hands.

“So what did she say at the follow-up?” Sara was asking.

“I don’t know! She checked it out.” Irene refilled her champagne flute from the bottle William had brought, which she’d reappropriated from the bartender and was hiding behind an Estelle Danziger gigantic toy nutcracker with immodest genitalia.

Sara held her flute out for a refill. “I hope she did more than take pictures this time.”

“They — I don’t know — I think she stuck a needle in there.”

“Well, did she or didn’t she?”

“She scraped it or something. I didn’t look.”

“Sweetie, you are hopeless.”

Irene looked crushed and laid her head on Sara’s shoulder. Sara told her that it was all going to be fine.

William wished he had any idea what they were talking about, but before he could hear more, he noticed Jacob blazing a path across the party toward the girls, with George a step behind. William pretended to be only just coming upon them all again.

Jacob was in mid-rant. “I’m opposed to the whole institution! I’m pissed as hell they want to legalize it for us. Not having to get married was the only advantage we used to have over you people. That and our get-out-of-the-army-free cards… I swear, next they’re going to figure out how to get me pregnant.”